by Lorna Graham
The evening with Klieg, like their lunch in the spring, had ended strangely. But despite this, it represented something of a breakthrough. It was the first time she’d been with Klieg and not felt awed. Even though several people in the audience had spotted him and nudged one another, she had all but forgotten she was sitting next to someone famous.
The truth was, Klieg was a mortal, and a thorny one at that. There was something disquieting about the way he spoke of the past. Unlike those of Eve’s grandfather, who used to spout happy tales of his barefoot boyhood like a geyser, Klieg’s accounts were halting and seemed to carry hidden, anguished layers of meaning. Yet it appeared that on some level he yearned to talk about the old days. It was as if he hadn’t spoken of them for so long, he had become afraid of losing them completely.
Eve wanted to hear more, more about Klieg and definitely more about Donald. And somehow she knew she would. Their relationship had changed tonight. She knew, even as Klieg had guided her down the stairs a little too quickly, that they would see one another again.
Back home, Eve was feeling expansive; she wanted to take a little dictation in this mood. Donald might have no real talent, no great legacy to defend, but was that the only criteria to consider? What about desire? Drive? Dedication? She pulled out the pad and a pen and settled into bed.
“Donald?” she called softly. “Donald?” But he did not answer.
• • •
The next morning, it dawned on her how astonished, how proud, Penelope would have been to know that her daughter had just spent the evening on the town in New York with none other than Matthias Klieg.
Eve padded to the closet and pulled down the family album she kept on a high shelf. She sat cross-legged on the bed in her pale blue Chinese print pajamas and flipped through the heavy black pages, looking at the pictures affixed with little white corner-shaped stickers. There were many of her brothers, each with their father’s square jaw and chin dimple, and a family portrait taken at the Vernon Manor on her parents’ fifteenth anniversary, when Eve was seven. There were also a dozen or so pictures of her mother: with Gin and his partners and their wives at various benefits, a half-smile as she looked just over the camera lens; on a hammock in the backyard, reading a book and wearing capris with apple red polish on her toes; at the beach in California under an enormous umbrella, the children in the foreground, building sandcastles in the sun. She was still so fresh-looking then; no one would have guessed that in just a couple of months, she would get desperately sick.
It started with weakness on one side of Penelope’s body. Her jet black hair took on an ashy cast, and in a matter of days, her luminous skin grew thin and veins sprouted across the backs of her hands. There was vomiting and double vision and loss of memory. She begged off from hosting parties for Gin’s partners and their wives, and her hothouse flowers began to droop. Soon after, her bed had been relocated to the den so she wouldn’t have to negotiate the stairs, and she lay on it, breathing shallowly, drinking water from a glass on her bedside table through an extra-long straw. A brain tumor, they said. There would be surgery, but first, medication to control the swelling. The doctors gave her special pills to take at specific intervals, without which it was said she would lapse into unconsciousness and soon after, well, they didn’t tell little girls things like that.
Gin’s pain took the form of distraction. He was unable to focus on cases, and his partners insisted he cut back his hours at the office. But aside from providing the pills like clockwork, he proved mostly useless. Words failed him, so instead he brought his wife tray after tray of objects, usually things she had no use for. There were beautiful plates of fruit she could not eat and stacks of books she hadn’t the strength to pick up. In desperation, he brought in jewelry from her box to wear and souvenirs from their trips abroad to hold in her slight, shaky hands. Not knowing how to talk to his children about what was happening, he encouraged them to spend as much time “in the fresh air” as possible, and the boys, who were on numerous teams, complied with resignation if not with enthusiasm.
But not Eve. Instead of heading to the library, where she usually listened to the “story lady,” she came home every day, right after school, taking up a post next to Penelope’s bed. At first, they spoke of everyday things. Her fingers worrying the top of the sheet, her mother would ask about how the new gardener was faring with the dahlias or whether her father had remembered PTA night at the boys’ school.
One cool day, Eve reached for a hot water bottle next to the bed and knocked over one of the books that Gin had left in a stack on the floor. It was by someone named Dawn Powell and it was old and frayed but she liked the title, The Happy Island, which sounded like a place you’d want to go. She also liked the cover, a cabaret singer and piano player surrounded by patrons swilling drinks at checkered tables.
The dust jacket called the book’s characters “schemers and dreamers on crossed paths, embroiled in a series of dramas, double-crossings, and hullabaloos that would make the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah seem like mere suburbs of li’l old New York.” Eve laughed at the word “hullabaloo” and Penelope smiled. “Dawn Powell was from Ohio, just like us,” she said.
Eve opened the book and began to read aloud, enjoying wrapping her tongue around names like Van Deusen and Dol Lloyd, and places like Hamburger Mary’s and The Studio Club. The book read like a fairy tale, though a strange and brittle one. The characters were clever and arch but vulnerable because of their secrets. One of them, a nightclub singer named Prudence Bly, had left Silver City, Ohio—it seemed everyone was from Ohio—and all it represented, for New York. Eve loved the way her transformation was described: “Overnight she erased Silver City and overnight invented a new personality into which she stepped and, like her grandmother, kept this dress on day and night.”
“Before you were born, I was a New Yorker,” Penelope said, closing her eyes, her lashes fanning over the tiny strawberry-shaped birthmark under her left lower lid. “Did you know that, honey?”
Eve did know. Based on what she’d gathered from after-dinner-coffee conversations among the grown-ups, her mother—Penelope Easton, as she was known back then—had had something of a colorful past “back East” before being claimed by her father, who’d made “an honest woman out of her.” Which was odd, because Eve had never heard even one story about her mother lying.
“What was it like there?”
Penelope opened her eyes to the ceiling, a canvas for a mental picture she seemed to paint. “I don’t think I can tell you, at least not in a way that would make any sense. New York is different for everyone. You need to see it for yourself.”
Eve kept reading, all afternoon and into the evening, when Gin brought in a deck of cards and shooed her out. But the next day she started again, and a few days after that, they finished the book and she picked up another. Over the weeks, Eve worked her way through the Powell collection, but with each volume, progress became slower because so many passages touched off recollections. In contrast to her short-term memory, Penelope’s long-term recall seemed to catch fire. In hoarse whispers, she mused about the charmers and the strivers, the rascals and criminals she had known, the kind of people “you find only in the Big Apple.”
Penelope’s tone grew wistful as she spoke of a young man named Mack. “Now, you can’t say anything to your father about this. But I did love someone else once. He was a writer and the leader of our gang. Talented, gregarious, audacious. The women were mad about him, but for some reason he only had eyes for me.” Penelope waxed on for several minutes about romantic strolls through the Village with Mack in the mid-sixties, perusing sidewalk art displays, listening to the folksingers around the fountain in Washington Square Park, and wandering the Italian section with its old men gossiping on the bocce courts and kids playing stickball. “Mack couldn’t walk past a game without waving for the broom handle,” she said, marveling at the memory. “He’d whack the ball and that thing would sail onto a roof two blocks away,”
“What happened to him?” asked Eve.
Penelope pressed her lips together and blinked hard one or two times. “I came back here for the wedding of an old friend. I was one of her bridesmaids and your dad was one of the groomsmen. He pulled out my chair, took me on drives through the countryside and out to the Amish markets.” A bird flew out of a tree in the garden and Penelope turned her head toward the window. “I went back to New York, but not long after, a day came when I just knew it was time to come back home.”
“Because you’d fallen in love with Daddy?”
“Sure, sweetheart.”
Eve was happy to hear it. “And Mack?”
“We went our separate ways.”
“You told him you loved Daddy better?”
“I wrote him a note. It was easier.” Penelope closed her eyes and sighed.
“Is easier better?” asked Eve. But her mother was asleep.
Several weeks later, as Eve read aloud from Turn, Magic Wheel, Penelope began to perspire and her eyelids to flutter. In a whisper, she told Eve to get her father. Soon the room was full of men and equipment. Eve held her mother’s hand as she was wheeled through the living room. She had to stand aside when they got to the front door, and just before her mother slipped through, she gestured toward the book, still clutched in Eve’s hands. “You finish. You finish for both of us,” she said.
In the days and weeks that followed, Eve made her way through the shelves, reading the rest of her mother’s books, almost all, she would later realize, by New York writers. She read in her playhouse at the bottom of the garden or tucked up in her small room at the top of the stairs. She read while the funeral arrangements were made, while the lawyers and their wives milled around casseroles in the formal dining room, and while the corn rose in the fields and everyone else moved on.
Now Eve closed the album and placed it carefully on the floor beside the bed. She lay back and blinked up at the ceiling, head aswirl with pasts—hers, Klieg’s, and Donald’s.
Chapter 10
They ate at a minimalist Japanese place on the East Side, Bix and Eve sitting across a booth from Paul and Alex. It was a relief to be out with people her own age, people very much in the here and now. Much of the chatter broke down along gender lines but Bix proved to be a delightful companion. She wrote grant proposals for a nonprofit that distributed the hand-me-downs of wealthy New York children to the disadvantaged. She laughed easily and listened well.
“Alex really likes you, you know,” she said as they washed their hands in the ladies’ room.
“How do you know?” asked Eve.
“He’s handsome, thoughtful, passionate. Let’s just say girls come pretty easily to him. He’s got a different one every couple of weeks, without making much of an effort. And we, and by that I mean his college friends, never get to meet them. Yet he’s brought you to us twice. So yeah, I’d say he thinks you’re pretty special.”
After dinner, Eve had hoped they would go to one of the historic bars that she hadn’t yet seen, like Pete’s Tavern or the Algonquin. But everyone else wanted to go straight to the party, which turned out to be in a basement apartment in the Village.
Alex kissed her in the coat closet. “I missed you this week,” he said, and led her to the kitchen counter that served as the bar, where he mixed her a Manhattan. When the hosts dimmed the lights to show an arty video of the birthday boy, Alex nudged a friend off the couch so Eve could have a seat. The party was moving into high gear at 1 a.m. when he took her aside. “Want to get out of here?” he asked.
Out on the sidewalk, the fresh air was invigorating. They walked, holding hands. No taxis were in sight, but Eve thought they’d find one on Seventh Avenue for the trip over to Brooklyn.
“Hey, look. We’re in front of your building,” said Alex.
“So we are,” said Eve as she continued to walk. Alex stopped her.
“Can I come up?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“C’mon.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not, like, expecting anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. We can snuggle up and watch a movie. Order in. Play cards. Whatever you want.”
“That sounds fantastic. Let’s do it at your place.”
“Don’t you have to walk your dog?”
Eve blushed. “Actually, she’s with a friend for the night.”
He smiled. “Oh, she is, is she? Well, more room for the two of us.” He nuzzled her ear.
“The thing is,” Eve said, resting her head on his shoulder, “I’d love to see your apartment.” She couldn’t make it any clearer.
“The guys will be there all night. A half-dozen stinky, cranky computer geeks. We go to press next week. After that, you can come over for a whole weekend if you want.”
“My place just isn’t good for company,” Eve offered, trying to sound both apologetic and firm.
Alex thrust his fists into the pockets of his wool jacket and gave her a look of utter confusion. “Most girls, like, love cuddling up for a movie.”
“Another time, really,” she said.
He stood firm, squinting at her. “You know what?” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“There’s a coffeehouse down the street. Right on the corner.”
“You’re not gonna let me use your place?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“What are you, one of those ‘Rules Girls’? Not willing to spend a night together until there’s a ring on your finger? I thought that was long over but I’ve somehow dated three of them in the last two years. They just string you along, head games all the way.”
“That’s not it. Believe me.”
“Then you’re afraid to let me up.”
“What?”
“The Midwest girl is afraid I’m some kind of New York psycho? Afraid I might hurt you?”
“Obviously not,” said Eve, thinking this was getting ridiculous. “I’m more than happy to go to your place. Remember?”
“That’s pretty convenient, since you knew we couldn’t go there until the magazine was done.”
“Alex, for heaven’s sake. I’m crazy about you. I want to be with you. But we just can’t go up to my apartment.”
“Oh my God.” His eyes opened wide.
“What?”
“I get it.”
“Get what?”
“You’ve got another guy up there.”
“No, I don’t.”
“A boyfriend? Oh, no wait: a husband.”
“No.”
“The last two times we went out, you insisted on seeing yourself home. Why didn’t I put it together? It’s so obvious to me now. You’re cheating on some poor slob with me. Or vice versa. Maybe I’m the poor slob. Christ.” He kicked the stoop, seeming stunned, like he’d never even conceived of this kind of affront happening to him before.
“Where is this coming from?” asked Eve. The sudden bile in his tone had taken her by surprise. She’d guessed he had a temper, but he was starting to sound unhinged. “Are things not going well with the magazine?”
Alex’s face was blotchy. “Fuck you.”
The words hit Eve like a slap and she flinched. She was stunned at this side of him, one she never would have suspected was there. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.”
Eve swallowed and tried to regain her composure. “Let’s go somewhere and talk about it.”
“I’m done with the talking.”
“Well, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You know, I could call up ten girls right now and go to their place.”
Eve looked at him evenly for several seconds. “Then why don’t you do that?” she asked, then stalked up the steps to the front door and went in without looking back.
• • •
Eve couldn’t help but fume. How could she have misjudged Alex so badly? How could he have misunderstood her so completely? Only a
fter they were apart for a few days did she admit to the absurd fantasies she’d concocted around him. The two of them celebrating Christmas together, New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Even going to work for him at his magazine, penning clever, esoteric “writery” stuff. Becoming a fabulous New York couple.
It was odd. She hadn’t spared a second thought for Ryan after leaving Ohio, had only answered his letters with the odd postcard, but Alex had gotten under her skin. Or, if not actually Alex, the notion of Alex certainly had. And it wasn’t just him; it was his circle of friends. Eve sincerely liked Bix and would have enjoyed seeing her again, with or without Alex. But she didn’t even know Bix’s last name, let alone her phone number.
Donald was sympathetic at first but by day four, when Eve, in a fit of pique, actually pulled down a suitcase from the top shelf of the closet, he lost his patience.
“Collect yourself! You’re not going home over this nonsense. Look, he was just a boy. All right? Not your personal key to the city. You have to stop expecting so much of people. Alex wasn’t worthy, can’t you see that? And neither is Mark, I hope you’ve realized. Or this patsy Hap McCutcheon. And certainly not Vadis. God help this city if she’s what passes for a ‘real New Yorker’ these days. They’re just people, wandering around and bumping into the furniture like everybody else.”
Eve was only half listening. The unzipped suitcase lay on the bed. She picked out a couple of stray buttons in the corner and bounced them in her palm.
“At your age you shouldn’t be looking for attachments anyway. You should be enjoying the clichés of your relative youth: playing the field, sowing your wild oats, spreading your wings.…”
But this kind of talk just depressed Eve. She closed the suitcase, stoop-shouldered, too tired to even maintain her annoyance. She hated everyone, everything.
The evening was unexpectedly warm for fall, and she peeled off her cardigan as she toddled into the living room. The window was open a few inches, allowing in barbecue smells and party sounds from the other end of the courtyard.
